friday

Well the much-anticipated day had come, it was time to test my skills and endurance at the Thunder Hill racetrack up in Willows, CA. The racetrack is located up in Northern California, about 1 hour north of Sacramento on Interstate 5. Since it is about a 2.5 hour drive from the Bay Area, I had to wake up at the crack of dawn, leaving the house around 5:30am. Thankfully traffic was light and I got up to the track just in time to make the driver's meeting at 8:00am.


[Photo copyright Dito Milian (gotbluemilk.com)]
I met up with an assigned instructor who gave me some tips and advice about how to get around the track. One interesting tip that he gave me was to not worry so much about shifting, just leave it in 3rd or 4th gear most of the way around the track and instead focus on working on my line around the track. I already knew my way around the track having done several events here before, but I found his advice to be very helpful and found I was smoother and more precise in my driving when I didn't have to also think about downshifting and upshifting at every turn. In each session I found myself keeping up with and passing plenty of other cars, but there were also others that were definitely faster than me, and I waved them by when it was safe to do so in the passing zones.


It was a hot summer day and temps were probably in the 90s. As the day went on the temperatures kept rising and I was getting pretty sweaty in my helmet. Good thing the track had a nice air-conditioned driver's lounge area that we could relax in between the sessions and plenty of water and drinks to keep us hydrated. I must have chugged 4-5 bottles of water and a few cups of juice or iced tea during the day.



Of course since it was a track day you get to see all kinds of fantastic sports cars and dedicated track racers -- this event was no exception. Here are a few photos I took of some of the more interesting cars. In particular there were several Lotus Elises and one sweet looking orange colored Lotus Exige.





There was a professional photographer at the track who snapped great shots of us from various corners of the course, and I bought a CD of the photos from him. You can see some of the photos he took from his site: http://gotbluemilk.com/web060630/28/


To sum it all up I had a great day at the track, had lots of fun and got to drive my car at 9/10ths of its potential in a safe environment. I was amazed at how well the car and tires performed on track, without a single mechanical problem despite the hard day of driving. At the end of the day I put the top back up, powered on the air conditioning, and cruised on out of there.